In terms of infrastructure, there are projects that always appear on the lists of pending works and never end up becoming a reality. Until now, the bus lane to Barcelona via the B-23 was one of them. The works have finally been awarded and the starting gun has been given for the construction of an exclusive lane for buses from Sant Feliu de Llobregat to Diagonal.
This is a response to a demand that dates back to 2001, the date on which the first claim by mayors of Baix Llobregat, political parties and passenger transport companies appeared in the newspaper library of La Vanguardia, all of them fed up with the congestion at the entrance every morning to Barcelona via the B-23 (at that time still the A-2 motorway) and which trapped private vehicles and buses in 2001 as it did in 2023. In these 22 years there have been many moments when it seemed so , but when an agreement was not crossed through, it was a crisis that sent everything to hell.
Once the work on the ground begins, all this remains in small battles for the politicians and technicians who have battled until they achieved it. Now is the time for the works, which will last about two and a half years, a little longer than initially planned, although after so many years of waiting, no one is coming from there anymore. If nothing goes wrong, in the autumn of 2025 the new lane of about seven and a half kilometers in length will be enabled for the more than 600 buses that pass through this point every day, which will see the journey time cut by up to 15 minutes at rush hour. when major traffic jams occur. Although the mayors of the first crown of Baix Llobregat have been the ones who have put up the most battle for this infrastructure, those who benefit the most are travelers originating in Igualada, Vilafranca and other points in the center of Catalonia who enter the big city from through this fast lane. Some four million passengers may benefit annually.
The investment in this action is 17.6 million euros by the Ministry of Transport, which will take advantage of European funds to finance the works. The drafting of the project and the tender, on the other hand, has been the responsibility of the Generalitat, following the model of entrustment that they also want to replicate on the B-40 between Sabadell and Terrassa, although in this case there was a clear consensus from both the town halls as well as employers’ associations, unions, economic, social and public transport entities.
The new exclusive lane for public transport will be located to the left of the entrance lanes to Barcelona, ??and will not reduce space for private vehicles. The median will be used to gain space and asphalt and paint will suffice in a large part of the route. What will give the most work are the seven bridges and elevated structures in which it will be necessary to carry out larger-scale works.
Even so, the fact that 22 years have passed until the start of the works is especially bloody, because it is not a work that requires a tunnel boring machine, or urban modifications or great fuss. All that was missing was a political will that did not exist until Raquel Sánchez took over the Ministry of Transport and signed Xavier Flores as Secretary General of Infrastructures. The one who in his previous stage in the Generalitat had been the father of the project, and cursed that it had been stored in a drawer for more than a decade, he quickly got along with his former colleagues from the Territori department to unblock the bus lane.
The start of the works was attended by Flores himself, as well as by the Minister and the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès. Once the works are finished, the Catalan Government will assume the powers of this road called to be increasingly urban and less motorway in a future transformation in the style of the Gran Via as it passes through l’Hospitalet, although we will still have to wait to see it another two decades at least.
